Finally, let us take a glance at the Kritische Geschichte
der Nationalökonomie, at “that enterprise” of Herr Dühring's
which, as he says, “is absolutely without precedent” {9}. It may be
that here at last we shall find the definitive and most strictly scientific
treatment which he has so often promised us.

Herr Dühring makes a great deal of noise over his discovery that

“economic science” is “an enormously modern
phenomenon” (p. 12).

In fact, Marx says in Capital: “Political economy
... as an independent science, first sprang into being during the period of
manufacture”; and in Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, page
29, that “classical political economy ... dates from William Petty in
England and Boisguillebert in France, and closes with Ricardo in the former
country and Sismondi in the latter”. Herr Dühring follows the path thus
laid down for him, except that in his view higher economics begins
only with the wretched abortions brought into existence by bourgeois science
after the close of its classical period. On the other hand, he is fully
justified in triumphantly proclaiming at the end of his introduction:

“But if this enterprise, in its externally appreciable
peculiarities and in the more novel portion of its content, is absolutely
without precedent, in its inner critical approaches and its general standpoint,
it is even more peculiarly mine” (p. 9).

It is a fact that, on the basis of both its external and its
internal features, he might very well have announced his
“enterprise” (the industrial term is not badly chosen) as: The
Ego and His Own[an oblique reference to
Stirner’s book].

Since political economy, as it made its appearance in history, is in fact
nothing but the scientific insight into the economy in the period of capitalist
production, principles and theorems relating to it, for example, in the writers
of ancient Greek society, can only be found in so far as certain
phenomena—commodity production, trade, money, interest-bearing capital,
etc.—are common to both societies. In so far as the Greeks make
occasional excursions into this sphere, they show the same genius and
originality as in all other spheres. Because of this, their views form,
historically, the theoretical starting-points of the modern science. Let us now
listen to what the world-historic Herr Dühring has to say.

“We have, strictly speaking, really” (!)
“absolutely nothing positive to report of antiquity concerning scientific
economic theory, and the completely unscientific Middle Ages give still less
occasion for this” (for this — for reporting nothing!).
“As however the fashion of vaingloriously displaying a semblance of
erudition ... has defaced the true character of modern science, notice must be
taken of at least a few examples” {17}.

And Herr Dühring then produces examples of a criticism which is
in truth free from even the “semblance of erudition”.

Aristotle's thesis, that

“twofold is the use of every object... The one is
peculiar to the object as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be
worn, and is also exchangeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who
exchanges the sandal for the money or food he is in want of, makes use of the
sandal as a sandal. But not in its natural way. For it has not been made for
the sake of being exchanged” —

this thesis, Herr Dühring maintains, is “not only
expressed in a really platitudinous and scholastic way“ {18}; but those
who see in it a “differentiation between use-value and
exchange-value” fall besides into the “ridiculous frame of
mind” {19} of forgetting that “in the most recent period” and
“in the framework of the most advanced system”—which of
course is Herr Dühring's own system—nothing has been left of use-value
and exchange-value.

“In Plato’s work on the state, people ... claim
to have found the modern doctrine of the national-economic division of
labour” {20}.

This was apparently meant to refer to the passage in
Capital, Ch. XII, 5 (p. 369 of the third edition), where the views of
classical antiquity on the division of labour are on the contrary shown to have
been “in most striking contrast” with the modern view. Herr Dühring
has nothing but sneers for Plato's presentation—one which, for his time,
was full of genius—of the division of labour as the natural basis of the
city (which for the Greeks was identical with the state); and this on the
ground that he did not mention—though the Greek Xenophon did, Herr
Dühring — the “limit”

“set by the given dimensions of the market to the
further differentiation of professions and the technical subdivision of special
operations... Only the conception of this limit constitutes the knowledge with
the aid of which this idea, otherwise hardly fit to be called scientific,
becomes a major economic truth” {20}.

It was in fact “Professor” Roscher {14}, of whom
Herr Dühring is so contemptuous, who set up this “limit” at which
the idea of the division of labour is supposed first to become
“scientific”, and who therefore expressly pointed to Adam Smith as
the discoverer of the law of the division of labour. In a society in which
commodity production is the dominant form of production, “the
market”—to adopt Herr Dühring’s style for once—was
always a “limit” very well known to “business people”
{18}. But more than “the knowledge and instinct of routine” is
needed to realise that it was not the market that created the capitalist
division of labour, but that, on the contrary, it was the dissolution of former
social connections, and the division of labour resulting from this, that
created the market (see Capital, Vol. I, Ch. XXIV, 5: “Creation
of the Home-Market for Industrial Capital”).

“The role of money has at all times provided the first
and main stimulus to economic” (!) “ideas. But what did an
Aristotle know of this role? No more, clearly than was contained in the idea
that exchange through the medium of money had followed the primitive exchange
by barter” {21}.

But when “an” Aristotle presumes to discover the two
different forms of the circulation of money—the one in which it
operates as a mere medium of circulation, and the other in which it operates as
money capital,

he is thereby—according to Herr
Dühring—“only expressing a moral antipathy”

And when “an” Aristotle carries his audacity so far
as to attempt an analysis of money in its “role” of a measure
of value, and actually states this problem, which has such decisive
importance for the theory of money, correctly—then “a”
Dühring prefers (and for very good private reasons) to say nothing about such
impermissible temerity.

Final result: Greek antiquity, as mirrored in the “notice taken”
{21} by Dühring, in fact possessed “only quite ordinary ideas” (p.
25), if such “niaiserie” (p. 19) has anything whatever in
common with ideas, whether ordinary or extraordinary.

It would be better to read Herr Dühring's chapter on mercantilism [93] in the
“original”, that is, in F. List's Nationales System,
Chapter 29: “The Industrial System, Incorrectly Called the Mercantile
System by the School”. How carefully Herr Dühring manages to avoid here
too any “semblance of erudition” {17} is shown by the following
passage, among others:

List, Chapter 28: “The Italian Political Economists”, says:

“Italy was in advance of all modern nations both in the
practice and in the theory of political economy”,

and then he cites, as

“the first work written in Italy, which deals
especially with political economy, the book by Antonio Serra, of Naples, on the
way to secure for the kingdoms an abundance of gold and silver (1613)”.

Herr Dühring confidently accepts this and is therefore able to
regard Serra's Breve trattato

“as a kind of inscription at the entrance of the more
recent prehistory of economics” {34}.

His treatment of the Breve trattato is in fact limited
to this “piece of literary buffoonery” {506}. Unfortunately, the
actual facts of the case were different: in 1609, that is four years before the
Breve trattato, Thomas Mun's A Discourse of Trade etc., had
appeared. The particular significance of this book was that, even in its first
edition, it was directed against the original monetary system which
was then still defended in England as being the policy of the state; hence it
represented the conscious self-separation of the mercantile system
from the system which gave it birth. Even in the form in which it first
appeared the book had several editions and exercised a direct influence on
legislation. In the edition of 1664 (England's Treasure etc.), which
had been completely rewritten by the author and was published after his death,
it continued to be the mercantilist gospel for another hundred years. If
mercantilism therefore has an epoch-making work “as a kind of inscription
at the entrance”, it is this book, and for this very reason it simply
does not exist for Herr Dühring's “history which most carefully observes
the distinctions of rank” {133}.

Of Petty, the founder of modern political economy, Herr Dühring
tells us that there was

“a fair measure of superficiality in his way of
thinking” {54} and that “he had no sense of the intrinsic and nicer
distinctions between concepts” {55} ... while he possessed “a
versatility which knows a great deal but skips lightly from one thing to
another without taking root in any idea of a more profound character”
{56}, .. his “national-economic ideas are still very crude”, and
“he achieves naivetés, whose contrasts ... a more serious
thinker may well find amusing at times” {56}.

What inestimable condescension, therefore, for the “more
serious thinker” Herr Dühring to deign to take any notice at all of
“a Petty” {60}! And what notice does he take of him?

Petty's propositions on

“labour and even labour-time as a measure of value, of
which imperfect traces can be found in his writings” {62}

are not mentioned again apart from this sentence. Imperfect
traces! In his Treatise on Taxes and Contributions (first edition
1662), Petty gives a perfectly clear and correct analysis of the magnitude of
value of commodities. In illustrating this magnitude at the outset by the equal
value of precious metals and corn on which the same quantity of labour has been
expended, he says the first and the last “theoretical” word on the
value of the precious metals. But he also lays it down in a definite and
general form that the values of commodities must be measured by equal
labour. He applies his discovery to the solution of various problems, some
of which are very intricate, and on various occasions and in various works,
even where he does not repeat the fundamental proposition, he draws important
conclusions from it. But even in his very first work he says:

“This” (estimation by equal labour) “I say
to be the foundation of equalizing and balancing of values, yet in the
superstructures and practices hereupon, I confess there is much variety, and
intricacy.”

Petty was thus conscious equally of the importance of his
discovery and of the difficulty of applying it in detail. He therefore tried to
find another way in certain concrete cases.

A natural par should therefore be found between land
and labour, so that value might be expressed at will "by either of them alone
as well or better by both"

“Had his own thought been more penetrating it would not
be possible to find, in other passages, traces of a contrary view, to which we
have previously referred” {63-64};

that is to say, to which no “previous” reference has
been made except that the “traces” are “imperfect”.
This is very characteristic of Herr Dühring's method—to allude to
something “previously” in a meaningless phrase, in order
“subsequently” to make the reader believe that he has
“previously” been made acquainted with the main point, which in
fact the author in question has slid over both previously and subsequently.

In Adam Smith, however, we can find not only “traces” of
“contrary views” on the concept of value, not only two but even
three, and strictly speaking even four sharply contrary opinions on value,
running quite comfortably side by side and intermingled. But what is quite
natural in a writer who is laying the foundations of political economy and is
necessarily feeling his way, experimenting and struggling with a chaos of ideas
which are only just taking shape, may seem strange in a writer who is surveying
and summarising more than a hundred and fifty years of investigation whose
results have already passed in part from books into the consciousness of the
generality. And, to pass from great things to small: as we have seen, Herr
Dühring himself gives us five different kinds of value to select from at will,
and with them, an equal number of contrary views. Of course, “had his own
thought been more penetrating”, he would not have had to expend so much
effort in trying to throw his readers back from Petty's perfectly clear
conception of value into the uttermost confusion.

A smoothly finished work of Petty’s which may be said to be cast in a
single block, is his Quantulumcunque concerning Money, published in
1682, ten years after his Anatomy of Ireland (this “first”
appeared in 1672, not 1691 as stated by Herr Dühring, who takes it second-hand
from the “most current textbook compilations”). [94] In this book the
last vestiges of mercantilist views, found in other writings by him, have
completely disappeared. In content and form it is a little masterpiece, and for
this very reason Herr Dühring does not even mention its title. It is quite in
the order of things that in relation to the most brilliant and original of
economic investigators, our vainglorious and pedantic mediocrity should only
snarl his displeasure, and take offence at the fact that the flashes of
theoretical thought do not proudly parade about in rank and file as ready-made
“axioms” {D. Ph. 224}, but merely rise sporadically to the surface
from the depths of “crude” {D. K. G. 57} practical material, for
example, of taxes.

Petty's foundations of Political Arithmetic {58}, vulgo
statistics, are treated by Herr Dühring in the same way as that author’s
specifically economic works. He malevolently shrugs his shoulders at the odd
methods used by Petty! Considering the grotesque methods still employed in this
field a century later even by Lavoisier, [95] and in view of the great distance that separates
even contemporary statistics from the goal which Petty assigned to them in
broad outline, such self-satisfied superiority two centuries post
festum stands out in all its undisguised stupidity.

Petty’s most important ideas—which received such scant attention
in Herr Dühring's “enterprise” {9}—are, in the latter's view,
nothing but disconnected conceits, chance thoughts, incidental comments, to
which only in our day a significance is given, by the use of excerpts torn from
their context, which in themselves they have not got; which therefore also play
no part in the real history of political economy, but only in modern
books below the standard of Herr Dühring's deep-rooted criticism and
“historical depiction in the grand style” {556}. In his
“enterprise”, he seems to have had in view a circle of readers who
would have implicit faith and would never be bold enough to ask for proof of
his assertions. We shall return to this point soon (when dealing with Locke and
North), but must first take a fleeting glance at Boisguillebert and Law.

In connection with the former, we must draw attention to the sole find made
by Herr Dühring: he has discovered a connection between Boisguillebert and Law
which had hitherto been missed. Boisguillebert asserts that the precious metals
could be replaced, in the normal monetary functions which they fulfil in
commodity circulation, by credit money (un morceau de papier). Law on
the other hand imagines that any “increase” whatever in the number
of these “pieces of paper” increases the wealth of a nation. Herr
Dühring draws from this the conclusion that Boisguillebert’s

“turn of thought already harboured a new turn in
mercantilism” {83}

in other words, already included Law. This is made as clear as
daylight in the following:

“All that was necessary was to assign to the
‘simple pieces of paper’ the same role that the precious metals
should have played, and a metamorphosis of mercantilism was thereby at
once accomplished” {83}.

In the same way it is possible to accomplish at once the
metamorphosis of an uncle into an aunt. It is true that Herr Dühring adds
appealingly:

“Of course Boisguillebert had no such purpose in
mind” {83}.

But how, in the devil’s name, could he intend to replace
his own rationalist conception of the monetary function of the precious metals
by the superstitious conception of the mercantilists for the sole reason that,
according to him, the precious metals can be replaced in this role by paper
money?

Nevertheless, Herr Dühring continues in his serio-comic style,

“nevertheless it may be conceded that here and there
our author succeeded in making a really apt remark” (p. 83).

In reference to Law, Herr Dühring succeeded in making only this
“really apt remark”:

“Law too was naturally never able completely to
eradicate the above-named basis” (namely, “the basis of
the precious metals”), “but he pushed the issue of notes to its
extreme limit, that is to say, to the collapse of the system” (p. 94).

In reality, however, these paper butterflies, mere money tokens,
were intended to flutter about among the public, not in order to
“eradicate” the basis of the precious metals, but to entice them
from the pockets of the public into the depleted treasuries of the state. [96]

To return to Petty and the inconspicuous role in the history of economics
assigned to him by Herr Dühring, let us first listen to what we are told about
Petty’s immediate successors, Locke and North. Locke’s
Considerations on Lowering of Interest and Raising of Money, and
North’s Discourses upon Trade, appeared in the same year, 1691.

“What he” (Locke) “wrote on interest and
coin does not go beyond the range of the reflections, current under the
dominion of mercantilism, in connection with the events of political
life” (p. 64).

To the reader of this “report” it should now be
clear as crystal why Locke's Lowering of Interest had such an
important influence, in more than one direction, on political economy in France
and Italy during the latter half of the eighteenth century.

“Many businessmen thought the same” (as Locke)
“on free play for the rate of interest, and the developing situation also
produced the tendency to regard restrictions on interest as ineffective. At a
period when a Dudley North could write his Discourses upon Trade in
the direction of free trade, a great deal must already have been in the air, as
they say, which made the theoretical opposition to restrictions on interest
rates seem something not at all extraordinary” (p. 64).

So Locke had only to cogitate the ideas of this or that
contemporary “businessman”, or to breathe in a great deal of what
was “in the air, as they say” to be able to theorise on free play
for the rate of interest without saying anything “extraordinary”!
In fact, however, as early as 1662, in his Treatise on Taxes and
Contributions, Petty had counterposed interest, as rent of money which we
call usury to rent of land and houses, and lectured the landlords, who wished
to keep down by legislation not of course land rent, but the rent of money, on
the vanity and fruitlessness of making civil positive law against the law of
nature. In his Quantulumcunque (1682) he therefore declared that
legislative regulation of the rate of interest was as stupid as regulation of
exports of precious metals or regulation of exchange rates. In the same work he
made statements of unquestionable authority on the raising of money (for
example, the attempt to give sixpence the name of one shilling by doubling the
number of shillings coined from one ounce of silver).

As regards this last point, Locke and North did little more than copy him.
In regard to interest, however, Locke followed Petty’s parallel between
rent of money and rent of land, while North goes further and opposes interest
as rent of stock to land rent, and the stocklords to the landlords. And while
Locke accepts free play for the rate of interest, as demanded by Petty, only
with reservations, North accepts it unconditionally.

Herr Dühring—himself still a bitter mercantilist in the “more
subtle” {55} sense—surpasses himself when he dismisses Dudley
North’s Discourses upon Trade with the comment that they were
written “in the direction of free trade” {64}. It is rather like
saying of Harvey that he wrote “in the direction” of the
circulation of the blood. North's work—apart from its other
merits—is a classical exposition, driven home with relentless logic, of
the doctrine of free trade, both foreign and internal—certainly
“something extraordinary” {64} in the year 1691!

Herr Dühring, by the way, informs us that

North was a “merchant” and a bad type at that,
also that his work “met with no approval” {64}.

Indeed! How could anyone expect a book of this sort to have met
with “approval” among the mob setting the tone at the time of the
final triumph of protectionism in England? But this did not prevent it from
having an immediate effect on theory, as can be seen from a whole series of
economic works published in England shortly after it, some of them even before
the end of the seventeenth century.

Locke and North gave us proof of how the first bold strokes which Petty
dealt in almost every sphere of political economy were taken up one by one by
his English successors and further developed. The traces of this process during
the period 1691 to 1752 are obvious even to the most superficial observer from
the very fact that all the more important economic writings of that time start
from Petty, either positively or negatively. That period, which abounded in
original thinkers, is therefore the most important for the investigation of the
gradual genesis of political economy. The “historical depiction in the
grand style” {556}, which chalks up against Marx the unpardonable sin of
making so much commotion in Capital about Petty and the writers of
that period, simply strikes them right out of history. From Locke, North,
Boisguillebert and Law it jumps straight to the physiocrats, and then, at the
entrance to the real temple of political economy, appears—David Hume.
With Herr Dühring's permission, however, we restore the chronological order,
putting Hume before the physiocrats.

Hume’s economic Essays appeared in 1752. In the related
essays: of Money, of the Balance of Trade, of
Commerce, Hume follows step by step, and often even in his personal
idiosyncrasies, Jacob Vanderlint’s Money Answers All Things,
published in London in 1734. However unknown this Vanderlint may have been to
Herr Dühring, references to him can be found in English economic works even at
the end of the eighteenth century, that is to say, in the period after Adam
Smith.

Like Vanderlint, Hume treated money as a mere token of value; he copied
almost word for word (and this is important as he might have taken the theory
of money as a token of value from many other sources) Vanderlint's argument on
why the balance of trade cannot be permanently either favourable or
unfavourable to a country; like Vanderlint, he teaches that the equilibrium of
balances is brought about naturally, in accordance with the different economic
situations in the different countries; like Vanderlint, he preaches free trade,
but less boldly and consistently; like Vanderlint, though with less profundity,
he emphasises wants as the motive forces of production; he follows Vanderlint
in the influence on commodity prices which he erroneously attributes to bank
money and government securities in general; like Vanderlint, he rejects credit
money; like Vanderlint, he makes commodity prices dependent on the price of
labour, that is, on wages; he even copies Vanderlint’s absurd notion that
by accumulating treasures commodity prices are kept down, etc., etc.

At a much earlier point Herr Dühring made an oracular allusion to how others
had misunderstood Hume's monetary theory with a particularly minatory reference
to Marx, who in Capital had, besides, pointed in a manner contrary to
police regulations to the secret connections of Hume with Vanderlint and with
J. Massie, who will be mentioned later.

As for this misunderstanding, the facts are as follows. In regard to
Hume’s real theory of money (that money is a mere token of value, and
therefore, other conditions being equal, commodity prices rise in proportion to
the increase in the volume of money in circulation, and fall in proportion to
its decrease), Herr Dühring, with the best intentions in the world —
though in his own luminous way—can only repeat the errors made by his
predecessors. Hume, however, after propounding the theory cited above, himself
raises the objection (as Montesquieu, starting from the same premises, had done
previously) that

nevertheless “’tis certain” that since the
discovery of the mines in America, “industry has encreased in all the
nations of Europe, except in the possessors of those mines”, and that
this “may justly be ascribed, amongst other reasons, to the encrease of
gold and silver”.

His explanation of this phenomenon is that

“though the high price of commodities be a necessary
consequence of the encrease of gold and silver, yet it follows not immediately
upon that encrease; but some time is required before the money circulate
through the whole state, and make its effects be felt on all ranks of
people”. In this interval it has a beneficial effect on industry and
trade.

At the end of this analysis Hume also tells us why this is so,
although in a less comprehensive way than many of his predecessors and
contemporaries:

“‘Tis easy to trace the money in its progress
through the whole commonwealth; where we shall find, that it must first quicken
the diligence of every individual, before it encreases the price of
labour."

In other words, Hume is here describing the effect of a
revolution in the value of the precious metals, namely, a depreciation, or,
which is the same thing, a revolution in the measure of value of the
precious metals. He correctly ascertains that, in the slow process of
readjusting the prices of commodities, this depreciation "increases the price
of labour" — vulgo, wages—only in the last instance; that
is to say, it increases the profit made by merchants and industrialists at the
cost of the labourer (which he, however, thinks is just as it should be), and
thus “quickens diligence”. But he does not set himself the task of
answering the real scientific question, namely, whether and in what way an
increase in the supply of the precious metals, their value remaining the same,
affects the prices of commodities; and he lumps together every
“increase of the precious metals” with their depreciation. Hume
therefore does precisely what Marx says he does (Zur Kritik etc., p.
141). We shall come back once more to this point in passing, but we must first
turn to Hume's essay on Interest.

Hume's arguments, expressly directed against Locke that the rate of interest
is not regulated by the amount of available money but by the rate of profit,
and his other explanations of the causes which determine rises or falls in the
rate of interest, are all to be found, much more exactly though less cleverly
stated, in An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of
Interest; wherein the sentiments of Sir W. Petty and Mr. Locke, on
that head, are considered. This work appeared in 1750, two years
before Hume's essay; its author was J. Massie, a writer active in various
fields, who had a wide public, as can be seen from contemporary English
literature. Adam Smith's discussion of the rate of interest is closer to Massie
than to Hume. Neither Massie nor Hume know or say anything regarding the nature
of “profit”, which plays a role with both.

“In general,” Herr Dühring sermonises us,
“the attitude of most of Hume’s commentators has been very
prejudiced, and ideas have been attributed to him which he never entertained in
the least” {131}.

And Herr Dühring himself gives us more than one striking example
of this “attitude”.

For example, Hume’s essay on interest begins with the following words:

“Nothing is esteemed a more certain sign of the
flourishing condition of any nation than the lowness of interest: And with
reason; though I believe the cause is somewhat different from what is commonly
apprehended.”

In the very first sentence, therefore, Hume cites the view that
the lowness of interest is the surest indication of the flourishing condition
of a nation as a commonplace which had already become trivial in his day. And
in fact this “idea” had already had fully a hundred years, since
Child, to become generally current. But we are told:

“Among” (Hume’s) “views on the rate
of interest we must particularly draw attention to the idea that it is
the true barometer of conditions” (conditions of what?) “and that
its lowness is an almost infallible sign of the prosperity of a nation”
(p. 130).

Who is the “prejudiced” and captivated
“commentator” who says this? None other than Herr Dühring.

What arouses the naive astonishment of our critical historian is the fact
that Hume, in connection with some felicitous idea or other, “does not
even claim to have originated it” {131}. This would certainly not have
happened to Herr Dühring.

We have seen how Hume confuses every increase of the precious metals with
such an increase as is accompanied by a depreciation, a revolution in their own
value, hence, in the measure of value of commodities. This confusion was
inevitable with Hume because he had not the slightest understanding of the
function of the precious metals as the measure of value. And he could
not have it, because he had absolutely no knowledge of value itself. The word
itself is to be found perhaps only once in his essays, namely, in the passage
where, in attempting to “correct” Locke's erroneous notion that the
precious metals had “only an imaginary value”, he makes it even
worse by saying that they had “merely a fictitious value”.

In this he is much inferior not only to Petty but to many of his English
contemporaries. He shows the same “backwardness” in still
proclaiming the old-fashioned notion that the “merchant”
is the mainspring of production—an idea which Petty had long passed
beyond. As for Herr Dühring’s assurance that in his essays Hume concerned
himself with the “chief economic relationships” {121}, if the
reader only compares Cantillon’s work quoted by Adam Smith (which
appeared the same year as Hume's essays, 1752, but many years after its
author’s death), [97] he will be surprised at the narrow range of
Hume’s economic writings. Hume, as we have said, in spite of the
letters-patent issued to him by Herr Dühring, is nevertheless quite a
respectable figure also in the field of political economy, but in this field he
is anything but an original investigator, and even less an epoch-making one.
The influence of his economic essays on the educated circles of his day was due
not merely to his excellent presentation, but principally to the fact that the
essays were a progressive and optimistic glorification of industry and trade,
which were then flourishing — in other words, of the capitalist society
which at that time was rapidly rising in England, and whose
“approval” they therefore had to gain. Let one instance suffice
here. Everyone knows the passionate fight that the masses of the English people
were waging, just in Hume’s day, against the system of indirect taxes
which was being regularly exploited by the notorious Sir Robert Walpole for the
relief of the landlords and of the rich in general. In his essay Of
Taxes, in which, without mentioning his name, Hume polemises against his
indispensable authority Vanderlint—the stoutest opponent of indirect
taxation and the most determined advocate of a land tax—we read:

“They” (taxes on consumption) “must be very
heavy taxes, indeed, and very injudiciously levied, which the artisan will not,
of himself, be enabled to pay, by superior industry and frugality, without
raising the price of his labour.”

It is almost as if Robert Walpole himself were speaking,
especially if we also take into consideration the passage in the essay on
“public credit” in which, referring to the difficulty of taxing the
state’s creditors, the following is said:

“The diminution of their revenue would not be
disguised under the appearance of a branch of excise or
customs.”

As might have been expected of a Scotchman, Hume’s
admiration of bourgeois acquisitiveness was by no means purely platonic.
Starting as a poor man, he worked himself up to a very substantial annual
income of many thousands of pounds; which Herr Dühring (as he is here not
dealing with Petty) tactfully expresses in this way:

“Possessed of very small means to start with he
succeeded, by good domestic economy, in reaching the position of not
having to write to please anyone” {134}.

Herr Dühring further says:

“He had never made the slightest concession to the
influence of parties, princes or universities” {134}.

There is no evidence that Hume ever entered into a literary
partnership with a “Wagener”, [98]
up> but it is well known that he was an indefatigable partisan of the
Whig oligarchy, which thought highly of “Church and
state”, and that in reward for these services he was given first a
secretaryship in the Embassy in Paris and subsequently the incomparably more
important and better-paid post of an Under-Secretary of State.

“In politics Hume was and always remained conservative
and strongly monarchist in his views. For this reason he was never so bitterly
denounced for heresy as Gibbon by the supporters of the established
church,”

says old Schlosser.

“This selfish Hume, this lying historian”
reproaches the English monks with being fat, having neither wife nor family and
living by begging; “but he himself never had a family or a wife, and was
a great, fat fellow, fed, in considerable part, out of public money, without
having merited it by any real public services”—this is what the
“rude” plebeian Cobbett says.

Hume was “in essential respects greatly superior to a Kant
in the practical management of life” {122}, is what Herr Dühring
says.

But why is Hume given such an exaggerated position in Kritische
Geschichte? Simply because this “serious and subtle thinker”
{121} has the honour of enacting the Dühring of the eighteenth century. Hume
serves as proof that

“the creation of this whole branch of science”
(economics) “is the achievement of a more enlightened philosophy”
{123};

and similarly Hume as predecessor is the best guarantee that
this whole branch of science will find its close, for the immediately
foreseeable future, in that phenomenal man who has transformed the merely
“more enlightened” philosophy into the absolutely luminous
philosophy of reality, and with whom, just as was the case with Hume,

“the cultivation of philosophy in the narrow sense of
the word is combined — something unprecedented on German soil—with
scientific endeavours on behalf of the national economy” {D. Ph. 531}

Accordingly we find Hume, in any case respectable as an
economist, inflated into an economic star of the first magnitude, whose
importance has hitherto been denied only by the same envious people who have
hitherto also so obstinately hushed up Herr Dühring's achievements,
“authoritative for the epoch” {D. K. G. 1}.

* * *

The physiocratic school left us in Quesnay’s
Tableau économique, as everyone knows, a nut on which all former critics
and historians of political economy have up to now broken their jaws in vain;
This Tableau, which was intended to bring out clearly the
physiocrats’ conception of the production and circulation of a country's
total wealth, remained obscure enough for the succeeding generations of
economists. On this subject, too, Herr Dühring comes to finally enlighten us.

What this “economic image of the relations of
production and distribution means in Quesnay himself,” he says,
can only be stated if one has “first carefully examined the
leading ideas which are peculiar to him”. All the more because these have
hitherto been set forth only with “wavering indefiniteness”, and
their “essential features cannot be recognised” {105} even in Adam
Smith.

Herr Dühring will now once and for all put an end to this
traditional “superficial reporting”. He then proceeds to pull the
reader’s leg through five whole pages, five pages in which all kinds of
pretentious phrases, constant repetitions and calculated confusion are designed
to conceal the awkward fact that Herr Dühring has hardly as much to tell us in
regard to Quesnay's “leading ideas” {105}, as the “most
current textbook compilations” {109} against which he warns us so
untiringly. It is “one of the most dubious sides” {111} of this
introduction that here too the Tableau, which up to that point had
only been mentioned by name, is just casually snuffled at, and then gets lost
in all sorts of “reflections”, such as, for example, “the
difference between effort and result”. Though the latter, “it is
true, is not to be found completed in Quesnay's ideas”, Herr Dühring will
give us a fulminating example of it as soon as he comes from his lengthy
introductory “effort” to his remarkably shortwinded
“result” {109}, that is to say, to his elucidation of the
Tableau itself. We shall now give all, literally all that he
feels it right to tell us of Quesnay’s Tableau.

In his “effort” Herr Dühring says:

“It seemed to him“ (Quesnay) “self-evident
that the proceeds” (Herr Dühring had just spoken of the net product)
“must be thought of and treated as a money value {105-06} ... He
connected his deliberations” (!) “immediately with the money
values which he assumed as the results of the sales of all agricultural
products when they first change hands. In this way” (!) “he
operates in the columns of his Tableau with several milliards”
{106} (that is, with money values).

We have therefore learnt three times over that, in his
Tableau, Quesnay operates with the “money values” of
“agricultural products”, including the money values of the
“net product” or “net proceeds”. Further on in the text
we find:

“Had Quesnay considered things from a really natural standpoint, and
had he rid himself not only of regard for the precious metals and the amount of
money, but also of regard for money values... But as it is he reckons
solely with sums of value, and imagined” (!) “the net
product in advance as a money value” {106}.

So for the fourth and fifth time: there are only money values in the
Tableau!

“He” (Quesnay) “obtained it” (the net
product) “by deducting the expenses and thinking,” (!)
“principally” (not traditional but for that matter all the more
superficial reporting) “of that value which would accrue to the landlord
as rent” {106}.

We have still not advanced a step; but now it is coming:

“On the other hand, however, now
also”—this “however, now also” is a gem!—“the net product, as
a natural object, enters into circulation, and in this way becomes an element
which ... should serve ... to maintain the class which is described as sterile.
In this the confusion can at once” (!)“be seen—the confusion
arising from the fact that in one case it is the money value, and in the other
the thing itself, which determines the course of thought” {106}.

In general, it seems, all circulation of commodities
suffers from the “confusion“ that commodities enter into circulation
simultaneously as “natural objects” and as “money values”. But we are still
moving in a circle about “money value”, for

“Quesnay is anxious to avoid a double booking of the
national-economic proceeds” {106}.

With Herr Dühring's permission: In Quesnay's Analysis
at the foot of the Tableau, the various kinds of products figure as
“natural objects” and above, in the Tableau itself, their money values
are given. Subsequently Quesnay even made his famulus, the Abbé Baudeau,
include the natural objects in the Tableau itself, beside
their money values.

After all this “effort“, we at last get the “result”. Listen and marvel at
these words:

“Nevertheless, the inconsequence“ (referring to the role
assigned by Quesnay to the landlords) “at once becomes clear when we
enquire what becomes of the net product, which has been
appropriated as rent, in the course of the national-economic
circulation. In regard to this the physiocrats and the economic
Tableau could offer nothing but confused and arbitrary conceptions,
ascending to mysticism” {110}.

All’s well that ends well. So Herr Dühring does not know “what
becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course
of the national-economic circulation” (represented in the Tableau). To
him, the Tableau is the “squaring of the circle” {110}. By his own
confession, he does not understand the ABC of physiocracy. After all the
beating about the bush, the dropping of buckets into an empty well, the hying
hither and thither, the harlequinades, episodes, diversions, repetitions and
stupefying mix-ups whose sole purpose was to prepare us for the imposing
conclusion, “what the Tableau means in Quesnay himself”
{105}—after all this Herr Dühring's shamefaced confession that he
himself does not know.

Once he has shaken off this painful secret, this Horatian “black care” which
sat hunched on his back during his ride through the land of the physiocrats,
our “serious and subtle thinker” blows another merry blast on his trumpet, as
follows:

“The lines which Quesnay draws here and there” (in all there
are just five of them!) “in his otherwise fairly simple” (!) “Tableau,
and which are meant to represent the circulation of the net product”, make one
wonder whether “these whimsical combinations of columns” may not be suffused
with fantastic mathematics; they are reminiscent of Quesnay’s attempts to
square the circle” {110}—and so forth.

As Herr Dühring, by his own admission, was unable to understand
these lines in spite of their simplicity, he had to follow his favourite
procedure of casting suspicion on them. And now he can confidently
deliver the coup de grâce to the vexatious Tableau:

“We have considered the net product in this its most
dubious aspect” {111}, etc.

So the confession he was constrained to make that he does not
understand the first word about the Tableau économique and the “role”
played by the net product which figures in it—that is what Herr Dühring
calls “the most dubious aspect of the net product”! What grim humour!

But in order that our readers may not be left in the same cruel ignorance
about Quesnay’s Tableau as those necessarily are who receive their
economic wisdom “first hand” from Herr Dühring, we will explain it briefly as
follows:

As is known, the physiocrats divide society into three classes: (1) The
productive, i.e., the class which is actually engaged in agriculture —
tenant-farmers and agricultural labourers; they are called productive, because
their labour yields a surplus: rent. (2) The class which appropriates this
surplus, including the landowners and their retainers, the prince and in
general all officials paid by the state, and finally also the Church in its
special character as appropriator of tithes. For the sake of brevity, in what
follows we call the first class simply “farmers”, and the second class
“landlords”. (3) The industrial or sterile class; sterile because, in the view
of the physiocrats, it adds to the raw materials delivered to it by the
productive class only as much value as it consumes in means of subsistence
supplied to it by that same class. Quesnay's Tableau was intended to
portray how the total annual product of a country (concretely, France)
circulates among these three classes and facilitates annual reproduction.

The first premise of the Tableau was that the farming system and
with it large-scale agriculture, in the sense in which this term was understood
in Quesnay’s time, had been generally introduced, Normandy, Picardy,
Île-de-France and a few other French provinces serving as prototypes. The
farmer therefore appears as the real leader in agriculture, as he represents in
the Tableau the whole productive (agricultural) class and pays the
landlord a rent in money. An invested capital or inventory of ten milliard
livres is assigned to the farmers as a whole; of this sum, one-fifth, or two
milliards, is the working capital which has to be replaced every
year—this figure too was estimated on the basis of the best-managed farms
in the provinces mentioned above.

Further premises: (1) that for the sake of simplicity constant prices and
simple reproduction prevail; (2) that all circulation which takes place solely
within one class is excluded, and that only circulation between class and class
is taken into account; (3) that all purchases and sales taking place between
class and class in the course of the industrial year are combined in a single
total sum. Lastly, it must be borne in mind that in Quesnay’s time in France,
as was more or less the case throughout Europe, the home industry of the
peasant families satisfied by far the greater portion of their needs other than
food, and is therefore taken for granted here as supplementary to agriculture.

The starting-point of the Tableau is the total harvest, the gross
product of the annual yield of the soil, which is consequently placed as the
first item—or the “total reproduction” of the country, in this case
France. The magnitude of value of this gross product is estimated on the basis
of the average prices of agricultural products among the trading nations. It
comes to five milliard livres, a sum which roughly expresses the money value of
the gross agricultural production of France based on such statistical estimates
as were then possible. This and nothing else is the reason why in his
Tableau Quesnay “operates with several milliards” {106}, to be
precise, with five milliards, and not with five livres tournois. [99]

The whole gross product, of a value of five milliards, is therefore in the
hands of the productive class, that is, in the first place the farmers, who
have produced it by advancing an annual working capital of two milliards, which
corresponds to an invested capital of ten milliards. The agricultural
products—foodstuffs, raw materials, etc.—which are required for the
replacement of the working capital, including therefore the maintenance of all
persons directly engaged in agriculture, are taken in natura from the
total harvest and expended for the purpose of new agricultural production.
Since, as we have seen, constant prices and simple reproduction on a given
scale are assumed, the money value of the portion which is thus taken from the
gross product is equal to two milliard livres. This portion, therefore, does
not enter into general circulation. For, as we have noted, circulation which
takes place only within a particular class, and not between one class
and another, is excluded from the Tableau.

After the replacement of the working capital out of the gross product there
remains a surplus of three milliards, of which two are in means of subsistence
and one in raw materials. The rent which the farmers have to pay to the
landlords is however only two-thirds of this sum, equal to two milliards. It
will soon be seen why it is only these two milliards which figure under the
heading of “net product” or “net income” {106}.

But in addition to the “total reproduction” of agriculture amounting in
value to five milliards, of which three milliards enter into general
circulation, there is also in the hands of the farmers, before the
movement described in the Tableau begins, the whole "pécule"
of the nation, two milliards of cash money. This comes about in the following
way.

As the total harvest is the starting-point of the Tableau, this
starting-point also forms the closing point of an economic year, for example,
of the year 1758, from which point a new economic year begins. During the
course of this new year, 1759, the portion of the gross product destined to
enter into circulation is distributed among the two other classes through the
medium of a number of individual payments, purchases and sales. These movements
separated, following each other in succession, and stretching over a whole
year, are however—as was bound to happen in any case in the
Tableau—combined into a few characteristic transactions each of
which embraces a whole year's operations at once. This, then, is how at the
close of the year 1758 there has flowed back to the farmer class the money paid
by it to the landlords as rent for the year 1757 (the Tableau itself
will show how this comes about), amounting to two milliards; so that the farmer
class can again throw this sum into circulation in 1759. Since, however, that
sum, as Quesnay observes, is much larger than is required in reality for the
total circulation of the country (France), inasmuch as there is a constant
succession of separate payments, the two milliard livres in the hands of the
farmers represent the total money in circulation in the nation.

The class of landlords drawing rent first appears, as is the case sometimes
even today, in the role of receivers of payments. On Quesnay's assumption the
landlords proper receive only foursevenths of the two milliards of rent:
two-sevenths go to the government, and one-seventh to the receivers of tithes.
In Quesnay's day the Church was the biggest landlord in France and in addition
received the tithes on all other landed property.

The working capital (avances annuelles) advanced by the “sterile”
class in the course of a whole year consists of raw materials to the value of
one milliard—only raw materials, because tools, machinery, etc., are
included among the products of that class itself. The many different roles,
however, played by such products in the industrial enterprises of this class do
not concern the Tableau any more than the circulation of commodities
and money which takes place exclusively within that class. The wages for the
labour by which the sterile class transforms the raw materials into
manufactured goods are equal to the value of the means of subsistence which it
receives in part directly from the productive class, and in part indirectly,
through the landlords. Although it is itself divided into capitalists and
wage-workers, it forms, according to Quesnay's basic conception, an integral
class which is in the pay of the productive class and of the landlords. The
total industrial production, and consequently also its total circulation, which
is distributed over the year following the harvest, is likewise combined into a
single whole. It is therefore assumed that at the beginning of the movement set
out in the Tableau the annual commodity production of the sterile
class is entirely in its hands, and consequently that its whole working
capital, consisting of raw materials to the value of one milliard, has been
converted into goods to the value of two milliards, one-half of which
represents the price of the means of subsistence consumed during this
transformation. An objection might be raised here: Surely the sterile class
also uses up industrial products for its own domestic needs; where are these
shown, if its own total product passes through circulation to the other
classes? This is the answer we are given: The sterile class not only itself
consumes a portion of its own commodities, but in addition it strives to retain
as much of the rest as possible. It therefore sells the commodities thrown by
it into circulation above their real value, and must do this, as we have
evaluated these commodities at the total value of their production. This,
however, does not affect the figures of the Tableau, for the two other
classes receive manufactured goods only to the value of their total production.

So now we know the economic position of the three different classes at the
beginning of the movement set out in the Tableau.

The productive class, after its working capital has been replaced in kind,
still has three milliards of the gross product of agriculture and two milliards
in money. The landlord class appears only with its rent claim of two milliards
on the productive class. The sterile class has two milliards in manufactured
goods. Circulation passing between only two of these three classes is called
imperfect by the physiocrats; circulation which takes place between all three
classes is called perfect.

Now for the economic Tableau itself.

First (imperfect) Circulation: The farmers pay the
landlords the rent due to them with two milliards of money, without receiving
anything in return. With one of these two milliards the landlords buy means of
subsistence from the farmers, to whom one-half of the money expended by them in
the payment of rent thus returns.

In his Analyse du Tableau économique Quesnay does not make further
mention of the state, which receives two-sevenths, or of the Church, which
receives one-seventh, of the land rent, as their social roles are generally
known. In regard to the landlord class proper, however, he says that its
expenditure (in which that of all its retainers is included) is at least as
regards the great bulk of it unfruitful expenditure, with the exception of
that small portion which is used “for the maintenance and improvement of their
lands and the raising of their standard of cultivation”. But by “natural law”
their proper function consists precisely in “provision for the good management
and expenditure for the maintenance of their patrimony in good repair”, or, as
is explained further on, in making the avances foncieres, that is,
outlays for the preparation of the soil and provision of all equipment needed
by the farms, which enable the farmer to devote his whole capital exclusively
to the business of actual cultivation.

Second (perfect) Circulation: With the second milliard of
money still remaining in their hands, the landlords purchase manufactured goods
from the sterile class, and the latter, with the money thus obtained, purchases
from the farmers means of subsistence for the same sum.

Third (imperfect) Circulation: The farmers buy from the
sterile class, with one milliard of money, a corresponding amount of
manufactured goods; a large part of these goods consists of agricultural
implements and other means of production required in agriculture. The sterile
class returns the same amount of money to the farmers, buying raw materials
with it to the value of one milliard to replace its own working capital. Thus
the two milliards expended by the farmers in payment of rent have flowed back
to them, and the movement is closed. And therewith also the great riddle is
solved:

“what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated
as rent, in the course of the economic circulation?” {110.}

We saw above that at the starting-point of the process there was
a surplus of three milliards in the hands of the productive class. Of these,
only two were paid as net product in the form of rent to the landlords. The
third milliard of the surplus constitutes the interest on the total invested
capital of the farmers, that is, ten per cent on ten milliards. They do not
receive this interest—this should be carefully noted—from
circulation; it exists in natura in their hands, and they realise it
only in circulation, by thus converting it into manufactured goods of equal
value.

If it were not for this interest, the farmer—the chief agent in
agriculture—would not advance the capital for investment in it. Already
from this standpoint, according to the physiocrats, the appropriation by the
farmer of that portion of the agricultural surplus proceeds which
represents interest is as necessary a condition of reproduction as the farmer
class itself; and hence this element cannot be put in the category of the
national “net product” or “net income”; for the latter is characterised
precisely by the fact that it is consumable without any regard to the immediate
needs of national reproduction. This fund of one milliard, however, serves,
according to Quesnay, for the most part to cover the repairs which become
necessary in the course of the year, and the partial renewals of invested
capital; further, as a reserve fund against accidents, and lastly, where
possible, for the enlargement of the invested and working capital, as well as
for the improvement of the soil and extension of cultivation.

The whole process is certainly “fairly simple” {110}. There enter into
circulation: from the farmers, two milliards in money for the payment of rent,
and three milliards in products, of which two-thirds are means of subsistence
and one-third raw materials; from the sterile class, two milliards in
manufactured goods. Of the means of subsistence amounting to two milliards, one
half is consumed by the landlords and their retainers, the other half by the
sterile class in payment for its labour. The raw materials to the value of one
milliard replace the working capital of this latter class. Of the manufactured
goods in circulation, amounting to two milliards, one half goes to the
landlords and the other to the farmers, for whom it is only a converted form of
the interest, which accrues at first hand from agricultural reproduction, on
their invested capital. The money thrown into circulation by the farmer in
payment of rent flows back to him, however, through the sale of his products,
and thus the same process can take place again in the next economic year.

And now we must admire Herr Dühring's “really critical” {D. Ph. 404}
exposition, which is so infinitely superior to the “traditional superficial
reporting” {D. K. G. 105}. After mysteriously pointing out to us five times in
succession how hazardous it was for Quesnay to operate in the Tableau
with mere money values—which moreover turned out not to be true—he
finally reaches the conclusion that, when he asks,

“what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated
as rent, in the course of the national-economic circulation?”—the
economic Tableau “could offer nothing but confused and arbitrary
conceptions, ascending to mysticism” {110}.

We have seen that the Tableau—this both simple
and, for its time, brilliant depiction of the annual process of reproduction
through the medium of circulation—gives a very exact answer to the
question of what becomes of this net product in the course of national-economic
circulation. Thus once again the “mysticism” and the “confused and arbitrary
conceptions” are left simply and solely with Herr Dühring, as “the most dubious
aspect” and the sole “net product” {111} of his study of physiocracy.

Herr Dühring is just as familiar with the historical influence
of the physiocrats as with their theories.

“With Turgot,” he teaches us, “physiocracy in France came to
an end both in practice and in theory” {120}.

That Mirabeau, however, was essentially a physiocrat in his
economic views; that he was the leading economic authority in the Constituent
Assembly of 1789; that this Assembly in its economic reforms translated from
theory into practice a substantial portion of the physiocrats' principles, and
in particular laid a heavy tax also on land rent, the net product appropriated
by the landowners “without consideration”—all this does not exist for “a”
Dühring. —

Just as the long stroke drawn through the years 1691 to 1752 removed all of
Hume’s predecessors, so another stroke obliterated Sir James Steuart, who came
between Hume and Adam Smith. There is not a syllable in Herr Dühring's
“enterprise” {9} on Steuart’s great work, which, apart from its historical
importance, permanently enriched the domain of political economy. But, instead,
Herr Dühring applies to him the most abusive epithet in his vocabulary, and
says that he was “a professor” {136} in Adam Smith’s time.
Unfortunately this insinuation is a pure invention. Steuart, as a matter of
fact, was a large landowner in Scotland, who was banished from Great Britain
for alleged complicity in the Stuart plot and through long residence and his
journeys on the Continent made himself familiar with economic conditions in
various countries.

In a word: according to the Kritische Geschichte the only value all
earlier economists had was to serve either as “rudiments” {1} of Herr Dühring's
“authoritative” {1} and deeper foundations, or, because of their unsound
doctrines, as a foil to the latter. In political economy, however, there are
also some heroes who represent not only “rudiments” of the “deeper foundation”
{D. C. 11}, but “principles” {5} from which this foundation, as was prescribed
in Herr Dühring’s natural philosophy, is not “developed” {353} but actually
“composed”: for example, the “incomparably great and eminent” {16}
List, who, for the benefit of German manufacturers, puffed up the
“more subtle” mercantilistic teachings of a Ferrier and others into “mightier”
words; also Care, who reveals the true essence of his wisdom in the
following sentence:

“Ricardo’s system is one of discords ... its whole tends to
the production of hostility among classes ... his book is the true manual of
the demagogue, who seeks power by means of agrarianism, war, and plunder”;

People who want to study the history of political economy in the
present and immediately foreseeable future will certainly be on much safer
ground if they make themselves acquainted with the “watery products”,
“commonplaces” and “beggars’ soup” {14} of the “most current text-book
compilations” {109}, rather than rely on Herr Dühring’s “historical depiction
in the grand style” {556}.

* * *

What, then, is the final result of our analysis of Dühring’s
“very own system” of political economy? Nothing, except the fact that with all
the great words and the still more mighty promises we are just as much duped as
we were in the Philosophy. His theory of value, this “touchstone of
the worth of economic systems” {499}, amounts to this: that by value Herr
Dühring understands five totally different and directly contradictory things,
and, therefore, to put it at its best, himself does not know what he wants. The
“natural laws of all economics” {D. C. 4}, ushered in with such pomp, prove to
be merely universally familiar and often not even properly understood
platitudes of the worst description. The sole explanation of economic facts
which his “very own” system can give us is that they are the result of “force”,
a term with which the philistine of all nations has for thousands of years
consoled himself for everything unpleasant that happens to him, and which
leaves us just where we were. Instead however of investigating the origin and
effects of this force, Herr Dühring expects us to content ourselves gratefully
with the mere word “force” as the last final cause and ultimate
explanation of all economic phenomena. Compelled further to elucidate
capitalist exploitation of labour, he first represents it in a general way as
based on taxes and price surcharges, thereby completely appropriating the
Proudhonian “deduction” (prélèvement), and then proceeding to explain
it in detail by means of Marx’s theory of surplus-labour, surplus-product and
surplus-value. In this way he manages to bring about a happy reconciliation of
two totally contradictory modes of outlook, by copying down both without taking
his breath. And just as in philosophy he could not find enough hard words for
the very Hegel whom he was so constantly exploiting and at the same time
emasculating, so in the Kritische Geschichte the most baseless
calumniation of Marx only serves to conceal the fact that everything in the
Cursus about capital and labour which makes any sense at all is
likewise an emasculated plagiarism of Marx. His ignorance, which in the
Cursus puts the “large landowner” at the beginning of the history of
the civilised peoples, and knows not a word of the common ownership of land in
the tribal and village communities, which is the real starting-point of all
history — this ignorance, at the present day almost incomprehensible, is
well-nigh surpassed by the ignorance which, in the Kritische
Geschichte, thinks not little of itself because of “the universal breadth
of its historical survey” {2}, and of which we have given only a few deterrent
examples. In a word: first the colossal “effort” of self-admiration, of
charlatan blasts on his own trumpet, of promises each surpassing the other; and
then the “result” {109}—exactly nil.